


City of Sinners

by Kaneko



Category: Oz (1997)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Happy Ending, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-13
Updated: 2009-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:42:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaneko/pseuds/Kaneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris Keller goes to hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	City of Sinners

**Author's Note:**

> Written for michiru42 in the Oz Magi 2008 Challenge. Many, many thanks to Terri.

The guy at the reception desk flicks through Chris's file without really reading it. "Well," he says. "Well, well, well." He shuts the file and looks at Chris over his spectacles. "Weren't you a piece of shit."

Chris rolls his shoulders. He's seen the same expression on McManus's face - that cocksucker. Guys like this, it's all about ego. They just want to make you sweat. He's fucked if he's going to do that.

The guy says: "Well, it's all going to change now. You're going to learn some control. You're going to follow the rules. There'll be no fighting. No fucking. You'll get a job and you'll hold it down."

Chris doesn't laugh in his face, but he wants to. "And if I don't - learn control?"

"Ah." The guy leans back in his seat. "William." His eyes shift to someone behind Chris. "I think he's one of yours."

Chris turns around and sees a little blond punk standing there, wearing an incongruous sombrero.

"Howdy," the little punk says.

And that's how Chris gets Billy the Kid as his sponsor in hell.

~~~

There are no firearms and no coins (hell is kinda communist, it turns out), but without Chris even having to ask, Billy demonstrates how to fire a bullet through a silver dollar. "Like this," he says, pulling his hand out of his pocket. "And then-" he flicks his other hand rapidly. "Pow! Pow, pow, pow! Yeah!" He blows imaginary smoke from his imaginary gun. "No one can do it faster'n me!"

The Kid is clearly loony-tunes. Chris loves it. He thinks he might love hell, especially when he finds out that everyone ignores the no-fucking rule. "Those dicks at reception are prudes," Billy tells him.

Someone, Chris thinks, has fucked up - probably the prude at reception - because instead of burning for eternity for his many sins, he's somehow ended up in the minimum-security wing. Or possibly the loony bin. As Billy shows him around, he can't stop staring at the endless sky and at the sea below the cliffs. And there are women. Honest-to-God women.

"And this is Al Capone," Billy says, when they get to the dining hall.

"No fucking way," Chris says. He isn't one to be starstruck, but Al fucking Capone.

Capone looks Chris up and down. He scratches the back of his neck and says: "You ever thought about whoring? We could maybe make some dough, you and me and your cock."

Al fucking Capone. Chris smiles even wider. Hell and prison, he thinks. Inmates everywhere are all the fucking same. He pops his fist into Capone's face. And - God - it's beautiful. He's going to tell the one about how he punched Capone in the mouth for the rest of his- well, for the rest of whatever.

Then his head explodes. He doubles over. He can't breathe. He collapses on his hands and knees. The pain is unbearable.

Then it's almost unbearable. Then it hurts like a motherfucker. Then it's gone.

When he's finally got it together, Capone is laughing at him with blood on his teeth.

"The fuck was that?" Chris grinds out. He's shaking from it. He can't find the strength to get up off the dirt.

Capone wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He spits blood onto the ground. "They train us here like dogs." He shakes his head. He's still chuckling.

Billy holds a hand out and pulls Chris up. "Free piece of advice," he says. "You got to mellow the fuck out, or this place is gonna suck you dry."

"Mellow," Chris repeats. He still feels weak.

"If you want to stay sane," Billy says.

Chris has a flash of Cyril O'Reily talking through a puppet. He really, really wants to stay sane. He breathes out slowly. "Know anyone who can hook me up with some dope?"

"No dope," Billy says. Then he tells Chris what the guy at the reception desk had neglected to mention - no booze, no smokes, no drugs, no salt, no sugar, no artificial flavourings, no fried foods, no saturated fat, no animal products, no fake animal products, no caffeine, no TV and no magazines - and Chris wonders if there's a way to kill himself all over again.

~~~

That night, in a bed uncannily like his bed in Oz - hardness and lumps alternating in all the wrong places - Chris lets himself think about Toby for the first time since he died.

He thinks about Toby's face in those last moments. He stares up at the ceiling and remembers the pain in his head from that afternoon. This is only almost unbearable, he tells himself. Maybe in time, it will only hurt like a motherfucker. Maybe in a long time it won't hurt at all.

~~~

The next morning, he's still in hell. He stares at the door - no bars and no lock. He closes his eyes.

"Keller!"

Chris opens his eyes. _Count_, he thinks. Then he thinks: where's the glass? Then he remembers he isn't in Oz.

Billy leans over him. Chris pushes him back. Not hard - he remembers the pain from yesterday. Billy doesn't seem to mind. He smiles all friendly. "Got you a job," he says. He holds out a glass. "And breakfast."

Chris rubs his eyes. Job. Breakfast. Not in Oz. He takes the glass and drinks. It tastes like seawater mixed with something that maybe used to be fruit. He doesn't spit it out, but it's a close thing. "The fuck?"

Billy shrugs. "Nutritional smoothie. You get used to them."

"Fuck," Chris says. He holds his breath and drinks the whole thing down. The food in Oz was better, and that's saying something.

The job, Billy says, is rock-breaking. Chris will pound rocks into shards and shards into dust. Pothole filler. The roads to hell don't fix themselves.

Chris doesn't mind the work. He swings his pick and cracks open stones. There are other rock-breakers - all big men with dead eyes. They don't talk much. Chris is down with that. He works until his knees and arms ache and he thinks he might pass out. The dry heat of hell is relentless.

At the end of the shift, Billy comes back with another smoothie. "Same time again tomorrow," he says. "Food is in the big hall."

~~~

The next morning Chris gets up. He eats (smoothies are not the only option, he discovers, but the other choices look far worse - grey-green mush, blue-green mush and green-green granules. "Very nutritious," says the guy ladling it out).

He works. He goes back to his familiar uncomfortable bunk.

He sleeps. He wakes up. He works. He eats. He settles into life in hell.

He gets in good with some of the greats - has a three-way with Bonnie and Clyde, fucks Jack Diamond, Machine Gun Kelly and Butch Cassidy - though not Capone. Dude died of syphilis and he's a real fucking douche.

He seduces Edna Murray just because he can. Back in the day, she says, the papers called her the Kissing Bandit - she liked to kiss the guys she was robbing. Chris likes that. He tells her she's real pretty (she is) and that maybe he loves her (he doesn't). He can't smoke or break people's necks, but he can still lie; he still has that.

One time when he's going down on her, she runs her heel down the line of his tattoo. "What do you think heaven's like?" she says.

Chris lifts his head reluctantly. He likes it when they fuck, not so much when they talk. "I dunno," he says. "Orgies?"

Edna rolls her eyes. She nudges his head back down. "Maybe it's like a cruise. Buffet dinners, dancing, movies... Everyone dressed in their best."

And then maybe Chris starts doing something right, because she stops talking about anything for a while.

~~~

One time when he was about nine, Chris wandered out of the neighbourhood. It had been summer. He remembers dust flying into his face in the wake of cars. His throat had been coated with it. There was a park at the end of one of the streets. He went in and drank from the water-fountain. He rinsed off his face. Then he lay down on the grass and shut his eyes. No one asked him why he wasn't in school. And he could've gone home pretty much any time - his stepfather was out of town that week - but he stayed until the sun went down. When he thinks of heaven, he thinks of that.

~~~

One morning, Billy is peering over him when he wakes up. Chris has his hand around Billy's neck, squeezing, before he's even really awake. His head explodes. "Fuck!" he says. He snatches his hand away and cradles his head. "Motherfuck!"

Billy clutches his neck, looking alarmed. "What happened to mellow?"

When he can breathe again, Chris pushes himself up. "Don't lean over me when I'm sleeping." He's so pissed, he wants to smash Billy's face. And he fucking can't. He feels like he's going to explode out of his own skin.

Billy backs off. "You get the day off work today."

Chris grinds his teeth. "What's the catch?" he says as calmly as he can.

Billy is still rubbing his neck. "Counselling session," he says shortly. Then he fucks off and Chris has to find the place himself.

Turns out, hell's therapist is the prude at reception. As Chris walks in, he looks even smugger, more self-righteous and more like McManus than he had at the desk. He even has McManus's stupid little goatee.

"Chris Keller," he says. "Christopher Keller."

Chris takes a seat and leans back comfortably. He folds his arms over his chest.

"Chris," the guy says again. "So how are you settling in?"

Chris thinks he could do this session in his sleep. He puts on his most earnest expression. "It was hard - at first," he says. "But I think I'm settling in good."

The guy flicks through his notes. "I see you've already had an ... incident."

"You mean Capone?" Chris spreads his arms. "Hey, that was my first day. We're the best of friends now, I swear."

"Mm hmm." The guy writes something down. "And this morning?"

Chris has to think. "Oh, you mean the Kid? I got no beef with him. You just don't lean over a guy while he's sleeping."

The guy writes something else down. "It's an extreme reaction," he says. "Do you think you might be suffering from PTSD?"

Chris raises his eyebrows. "Do _I_ think?" What a fucking amateur. "Maybe. Yeah, probably. Might help to get more time off work."

The guy writes more stuff down. He flicks through Chris's file. "You killed a lot of people."

Chris doesn't say anything. Toby always said: don't answer questions that aren't questions.

The guy looks at him. There's a weird look on his face, like he's hungry. "How would you like to feel how they felt?"

Chris feels the hair at the back of his neck rise. "What?"

"How would you like to feel everything those men felt before you snapped their necks? Or what about Nathanial Shemin - how he felt as you were stabbing him. The pain. The fear."

"I don't- I don't know. No." Jesus.

"Would you like to feel what Tobias Beecher felt when you brought him back to Oz?"

Chris clenches his hands so hard he can't feel his fingertips. He has to slowly unclench his jaw, muscle by muscle, before he can open his mouth enough to answer. "Can you do that?"

"Maybe at the next session," the guy says.

~~~

The next day, Chris breaks up rocks and thinks about the first time he betrayed Toby. He remembers Toby's face, blurred with heartbreak and confusion, and all because of _Chris_. Because he'd loved _Chris_. Chris had felt like shit. He'd felt like a fucking god.

~~~

He wakes up every morning anticipating the next session, but it's always another day of work.

At night, he imagines what it will feel like to be on the inside of Toby's skin. How it will feel to have his arms and legs broken, to be taken away from Holly, to be betrayed again and again. He wonders what it will be like to know - to really know - how much Toby had hated him by the end.

~~~

He sleeps with Edna Murray again. She's a good lay.

Afterwards, she wants to talk about heaven again. Chris blames the weather. There's no variety in hell, just constant dry heat. It reduces people's capacity for small talk. Too many conversations come back to the same things:

1\. Is this really hell?  
2\. Well, why doesn't it suck more then?  
3\. If this is hell, heaven must be pretty fucking incredible. Am I right?

Surprisingly, a lot of people find God in the underworld. Some of them pass out leaflets. As far as Chris can tell, the leaflets basically all boil down to the same answers:

1\. Of course it's hell. Only scumbags like us are here.  
2\. You think God's a sadist? He's not a fucking sadist.  
3\. You repent hard enough, you could find out for yourself.

After they fuck, Edna says: "I miss my mom. I guess she's up there somewhere."

Chris closes his eyes. He thinks about all the wrongs he did to Toby and to everyone in his life. Bonnie must be up there too. He blurts: "I don't really love you, you know."

Edna snorts. "No fucking kidding." She rubs her fingers over her lips and sighs. "You know what I miss? Cigarettes. Fuck, I'd kill for a smoke."

~~~

Sometimes, Chris thinks he repents. He finds himself thinking about all those people he killed. He breaks up rocks with his pickaxe and grinds the smallest pieces to dust under his feet. He thinks about Bryce Tibbetts and Mark Carachi - how scared they'd been. Christ, those guys had been so fucking young.

He splits open another rock, and behind him someone says, "Hey!"

Chris jerks up. He starts to raise his pick defensively and then stops. _Training us like dogs_, he thinks.

It's Billy. He looks at Chris's lowered pick and maybe smiles a bit - the prick. "Word is there's a new guy asking around about you," he says.

Chris wipes sweat from his eyes. "Big guy?" He hopes to fuck it isn't Schillinger.

"Nah." Billy snorts. "Looked like a pussy."

One of the college kids he'd killed, Chris wonders. But they're probably all in heaven. He wipes his eyes again. "You ever think about all the stuff you did?" he says. He doesn't look at Billy, he looks at the rocks.

"Sure," Billy says.

Chris sighs. "Sometimes, I think I'm a worse man than anyone here."

Billy's so quiet for so long that Chris thinks he's gone and walked away. But then he says: "I was only 21 when I died, but I killed fourteen people, all of them with children, wives, brothers, sisters, parents, friends. Believe me, all of us deserve to be here. We're all paying for something."

~~~

After his shift, Chris goes to get something to eat.

At the communal table, Al Capone is holding forth again. If it weren't for the fucking communists, he would've owned half the Midwest before he died. His cell in Atlanta had a baby grand and a minibar full of Macallan single-malt - in the middle of the Prohibition. And he could've walked out any time he wanted - all the guards were in his pocket. He just didn't want to mess around with a good thing.

"What about you, dollface?" he says as a girl slides into the seat next to Chris's. "You feel like messin' around with a good thing?"

Chris rolls his eyes. The thing about hell is that the punishments are subtle. Chris once ran a con where he pretended to be the janitor in an old-people's home. By the end of it, he'd stolen nearly $5,000 from the residents, but for two weeks before that, he got in at 7 in the morning _every_ morning and then spent the rest of the day around people who were being dead with their eyes open and their mouths yapping about all the stuff they'd done when they were alive.

Hell, he thinks, is just like that. It's an eternity of listening to Capone spin the same fucking line on every fresh piece of ass in the joint.

He stands up and drains his glass, glances at the girl.

His heart stops.

It ain't a girl. It's Toby.

"Hi Chris," Toby says. He sounds as casual as if he saw Chris yesterday.

"Toby," Chris says. His voice sounds croaky. He sucks in a breath, and suddenly his heart is pounding like a motherfucker.

Toby stands up and leans over Capone's shoulder. He doesn't take his eyes off Chris's face. "I already told you to fuck off, Al," he says. He jerks his head at Chris. "Let's go for a walk."

"How-" Chris stumbles out into the open air. He can't even form the questions he wants to ask.

"I died, Chris." Toby keeps walking and Chris can't do anything but follow him. He doesn't stop until they get to the lookout on the south side. The cliffs here are almost ugly - black-streaked and wild. Far, far below them the water licks the shore.

Toby looks out at the ocean. "I thought hell would be more... fiery."

Chris wants to touch him. He doesn't. Maybe this will be his real punishment, he thinks. Seeing Toby every day and not touching him - and knowing how much Toby hates him. "Did you-" he swallowed. "Did you suffer? When you died?"

Toby looks at him. The hot breeze ruffles his hair. "I didn't get the death penalty if that's what you mean." His mouth quirks. "You tried to set me up." He sounds conversational like he's recalling something that happened to someone else.

"Fuck," Chris says. He rubs a hand over his face. "Jesus, I'm sorry, Toby."

Toby snorts. "I guess if we were back in Oz, I'd shank you."

"You should," Chris says. "I'd deserve it."

Toby scratches his neck. "I kneed Al Capone in the balls this morning," he says. "Never felt that much pain in my goddamn life."

Chris smiles a bit. "My first day," he says, "I punched him in the mouth." He's always wanted to tell that story.

Toby smiles back. He looks dangerous as hell. "So have you got a room or something? A bed?"

~~~

They fuck on Chris's uncomfortable bed. Chris lies on his belly and presses his face into the lumpy pillow as Toby eases into him. The walls aren't glass. There are no guards. It feels pretty close to heaven.

Chris wonders how this can be allowed in hell. Probably Toby still hates him. Probably this is just a one-time thing. But why does Chris get anything at all when good people - Edna's mother, Bonnie - don't get to see the people they love? How is that fair?

When he comes, he thinks maybe he's saying "Toby, Toby". Or maybe he's saying "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry".

Afterwards, Toby rolls him over and runs his hands all over Chris's body, looking at all the scars and the dents and the line above his forehead where his hair is thinning. "Can't believe you're here," he says. He touches Chris's mouth. "How long has it been for you?"

"I don't know," Chris says. "Maybe a year? Maybe two?"

"Yeah, I thought so," Toby says. He shifts and turns until they're lying side by side. There's barely enough room. Toby looks up at the ceiling. "It's been ten years for me, Chris."

Chris frowns at him. He looks at Toby properly and sees lines at his mouth and eyes that he hadn't noticed before.

Toby's still looking up. "All those years," he says. His mouth twists. His eyes look wet. "I missed you so fucking much."

~~~

Toby misses his kids. He doesn't talk about it much, but it's in his eyes every single day.

"Don't seem fair," Chris says one morning. They're choosing between the grey-green mush and the blue-green. Neither is good, but it turns out both are better than the smoothies. "I get you and they don't." The guilt of it gnaws at him whenever he thinks about it.

Toby decides on grey-green, which kind of tastes like blueberries, only not really. Chris goes with the blue-green. Kind of like mushrooms. Maybe.

"Fair. Not fair." Toby shakes his head. "All I know is, I killed Hank and Andy Schillinger. Maybe not with my own hands, but I'm responsible. I have to pay for that one way or another."

They walk together to the table - at the far end from Capone.

"And maybe-" Toby says. He breathes out and it sounds shaky. "Maybe it's like those born-again leaflets say, and this is one stop on a longer journey. Maybe one day I'll see my kids again." He looks at Chris. "Until then, though, I guess we'll do our time."

~~~

They do their time. Sometimes they drive each other crazy and there's nothing they can do but circle each other, snarling, like two de-toothed sharks in a tank.

Sometimes, Chris thinks prison was better. At least in Oz, people were out to get you. Hell is a danger-free, death-free retirement home for ex-cons. Maybe even boiling in blood would be preferable.

And then again, sometimes, he looks at Toby lying beside him and he thinks maybe this is better than anything he could imagine.

One evening, after Chris finishes a long shift of breaking rocks, Toby meets up with him on the way back to the dining hall. The sun is setting. It's still hot - hell is always hot - but the shadows make the air seem cooler.

Chris brushes his hand over Toby's as they walk, and Toby looks at him and smiles. The lines around his eyes and mouth are relaxed. Chris never saw Toby look relaxed like that in Oz.

He slides his hand into Toby's. "Is this a happy ending?" he says.

Toby shrugs. He tugs on Chris's hand and draws him into a kiss. "I guess it's the ending we get," he says.

  
The End.  



End file.
